[plug] Linux hardware compatibility

[Gavin Chester]

Please excuse the preamble - if you have little time cut to the end
where I actually pose questions :^) :

I'm a user and lover of older hardware (for me it's a  recycling thing -
the PC I'm using everyday is a 2nd hand PII 450MHz with old SCSI drives
and a 32Mb graphics card), so I was out of touch with current hardware. 
However, I offered to help my 18 year old son (who lives 450km away)
build his own system for his first ever PC, since he doesn't have the
knowledge himself. So I have been doing research on the latest hardware
trends to help him get some suitable gear.  Of course, he has a limited
budget but can run to around $2000 - and he is satisfied with a
"mid-level" system, by today's standards.  

My research brought me up to speed to see some key shifts in technology
for desktop systems showing that he should consider a system based on:

- the 5 (five) series Intel chips with hyperthreading.  (I don't want to
start an AMD vs Intel flame war here - and I consider that going to
AMD's 64bit architecture is too early since there is little true 64 bit
software yet.)
- DDR2 RAM instead of DDR
- at least one or two PCIexpress slots along with PCI.
- PCIexpress x16 graphics instead of AGP x8

Along with this help I'm offering with the hardware I have been slowly
chipping away at his doubt and he is ready to consider running Linux on
this new PC (YAY! - suck that Bill Gates), or at least he will dual-boot
XP until he weans himself off Windoze.  So my questions are this:

1/ Is this sort of hardware supported with any typical distro out of the
box?  Eg. will he enjoy a good newbies distro like Mandrake and have it
detect all his hardware?
2/ People on this list have reported problems with Mandrake 10.1. 
Should I steer him to 10.0 or what is another good newbies distro?
3/ Should he consider a bleeding-edge distro, like Fedora Core 3, in the
hope of having better hardware support for newer gear?  The last thing I
want is for him to be put off Linux by having to try and patch his
kernel or any mucking about to get fundamental hardware working.  
4/  I can't remember the URLs for checking Linux hardware compatibility.
Can anyone point me to some useful sources of info? 
5/ Anyone running their own system with such hardware and have you had
Linux problems because of it?

TIA

Regards, Gavin